


Take My Advice

by birdinastorm



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Fire Emblem: Three Houses Black Eagles Route, Gen, Post-Black Eagles Route (Fire Emblem: Three Houses)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-13
Updated: 2020-04-13
Packaged: 2021-03-02 05:21:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,069
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23589823
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/birdinastorm/pseuds/birdinastorm
Summary: “How I do my work is none of your business,” Hubert replied with finality. He pulled the coffee cup closer.Ferdinand scoffed. “Of course it is my business. Think about it, Hubert. Every single day Edelgard may call upon us to do anything—to lend her, the empire, our strength. What good are you—what good are we—if you are here wasting your energy sitting up all night on one task?”Ferdinand knows what it takes to get things done.
Relationships: Ferdinand von Aegir & Hubert von Vestra
Comments: 2
Kudos: 6





	Take My Advice

The flush of dawn peeked over the rumpled hills, while Enbarr laid sleeping in their shadow, cozied up in a gauzy wrap of fog. The sun’s soft light brushed the top of the imperial palace. Ferdinand stood at his window to admire the view, as he did every morning. He took a few deep, fortifying breaths while running through his mental checklist for the day. Quite a few important things to get done, certainly, but before all that he must go on a quick ride through the country. A morning ride would invigorate him for the day to come—but before that even, it was necessary to get some breakfast. 

Ferdinand was usually the first minister in the dining hall in the morning—a point of pride, he simply couldn’t let a single morning go by in indolence—so he was pleasantly surprised to Hubert sitting in a far corner, leaning over some papers. He picked up some fruit and bread from the sideboard, as well as a cup of coffee for Hubert, and went over to him. 

“Good morning, Hubert,” Ferdinand said cheerfully, sitting opposite him at the long, empty table. “I brought you some coffee. It’s wonderful to see you up out of bed so bright and early.” 

“On the contrary,” Hubert said, glancing up from his work with some irritation, “I haven’t been to bed.” 

“Hubert, you cannot be serious!” Ferdinand said. “That is awful! What have you been doing all night?” 

“Important work for Her Majesty,” Hubert said vaguely, “and as always, none of your concern.” 

“I hope for your sake this work is not that important.” 

“Excuse me?” Hubert said, his voice cold. 

“Well, I say that because if it were so important, you would not be working on it so sleep deprived,” he said pointedly. 

“How I do my work is none of your business,” Hubert replied with finality. He pulled the coffee cup closer.

Ferdinand scoffed. “Of course it is my business. Think about it, Hubert. Every single day Edelgard may call upon us to do anything—to lend her, the empire, our strength. What good are you—what good are we—if you are here wasting your energy sitting up all night on one task?”

“Ferdinand,” he sighed in exasperation, “I take your meaning, but I will not let work which may have an enormous impact on Her Majesty’s well-being go undone while I adhere to your notions of the good and correct use of my own energy.” 

“Ah, is this why you have declined my invitations to go riding?” Ferdinand prodded. 

“Yes, I would say that’s a waste of my time and energy.” 

“And spending all night reading—what is this exactly?” Ferdinand picked up a piece of parchment. It was covered in tight, crabbed writing, lines crowded even into the margins. He recognized the words, which were all Old Adrestian, something every noble is taught to read, but nothing else about it made sense. When he looked up from it Hubert had a rueful smile. “Can you read this? It looks like utter nonsense.” 

“Unfortunately for me, it is not utter nonsense. It’s a cipher. I’ve made some headway in cracking it but—“ he shook his head. 

“And it is truly important to Edelgard that you be able to read this, as soon as possible?” 

“Truly,” Hubert said, with a sliver of despair that Ferdinand felt keenly. He steeled himself, for he knew what he had to do. Hubert reached for the cup of coffee, but before he could touch the handle Ferdinand had snatched it up. 

Hubert eyed the cup. “What are you doing? You don’t drink coffee.”

“That’s right,” Ferdinand said, giving him a defiant glare. He knocked back the cup in one gulp, grimacing through the bitter shock of it. “To think, I offered you this coffee and almost enabled this inefficient, absurd use of your prodigious faculties. Up all night, for a cipher!” 

Hubert just stared at him in stunned silence. 

“Drop this work now and get some sleep,” Ferdinand ordered. Hubert regained his composure, tilting at once into anger. 

“You dare to order me?” Hubert stood up. Ferdinand rose to meet him. 

“I do. We are equals, so I have every right. And you will make no progress with this nonsense if you do not sleep on it.” 

“Since we’re equals I have every right to ignore your order.”

“Yes you may—if you want to be a liability to Her Majesty.” 

“What did you say?” Hubert hissed. 

“A liability, Hubert,” Ferdinand enunciated slowly. “Go to bed.” 

They stared at each other across the table. Hubert’s hands clenched into fists, but Ferdinand could see how hollow his resolve was. Hubert looked up at the ceiling as if begging forgiveness of an ancient god—pledging a sacrifice to this deity whom he had unknowingly crossed and had cursed him with Ferdinand’s presence in his life. The moment passed, his prayer went unheard. He accepted his fate, this torment. Ferdinand had won. It was an easy victory against an opponent weakened by an entire night of wrestling meaning out of a cipher, but it was a victory nonetheless. Hubert sat down and put his head in his hands. But the war was not yet won—now to really put the pressure on him. Ferdinand gathered up the papers so that Hubert would be free of their vexing influence for a little while. Hubert just sighed as he did so. 

“Now, off to bed with you,” he said.

“Now?” 

“Do you really think I would let you go, so you could sneak off and keep doing work? I will not rest until I see you are in your quarters and sleeping,” Ferdinand declaimed. Hubert gave him one last baleful glare before gathering up his things and allowing himself to be marched out of the dining hall. 

Ferdinand made a show of being stern with both Hubert and Hubert’s manservant, a fellow with a whippet face named Blanchard. Blanchard wasn’t to let Hubert leave until he had slept at least a couple of hours, Ferdinand instructed him. If he did insist on leaving, Blanchard was to notify Ferdinand so that he could take appropriate punitive action—namely, cancelling an evening of chamber music next week that Ferdinand had arranged for them both. The quartet had travelled from northern Leicester territory, and would not be able to return to Enbarr for at least a year. Hubert looked suitably appalled at the notion of missing them, and having no more defenses left, consented to be bundled off to bed. It had all gone perfectly; Ferdinand collected his breakfast and went to his office, confident he had given an important, possibly even life-changing, lesson to his recalcitrant friend.

* * *

This morning was not quite as fine as yesterday’s, but losing that morning’s ride had been a necessary sacrifice in the name of Hubert’s well-being, to say nothing of his productivity. Still, Ferdinand could appreciate any morning no matter the weather—secretly he felt he had a poet’s heart. Fog hung over the fields, silvery and lush with new wheat like pale green velvet. The steady rhythm of his horse’s hooves striking the dirt road, and the birdsong ringing out from the indistinct stands of trees around him, made a soothing kind of music. Feeling alive, reaching with all his senses to grasp world, however briefly—that is what a morning ride is for. Yet something was amiss; he could hear the insistent beat of another horse’s hooves behind him. Plenty of other riders used this road, but a farmer would not be traveling at nearly a gallop. A messenger, or a pursuit? He touched his sword’s pommel. Surely he was being paranoid, but he turned to face the rider, heart pounding. 

He could barely see them, a dark blur in the shifting fog. The rider burst clear of the bank of fog, a tall man on a black horse, and seeing him at a halt in the middle of the road reined his horse in. Ferdinand blinked, it was Hubert, but this was so unexpected he could barely trust his eyes. 

“Hubert!” Ferdinand called, “You finally took up my invitation for a morning ride, I take it?” 

Hubert gave him a small smile with much more mischievousness in it than he liked. “You could say that.” 

“You could have informed me beforehand. When I heard you coming I was about ready to do battle.” His heart was still pounding. He didn’t trust the slightly smug expression on Hubert’s face; certainly he was not here just to go on a ride. Why accept his many invitations, given over many weeks, today. 

“Apologies for startling you,” Hubert said unapologetically. 

As they rode side by side in silence, Ferdinand’s anxiety grew. Perhaps Hubert really was angry with him for that incident at the breakfast table yesterday—though he ought not to be angry, he had done it for his own good! Or perhaps he was really was being paranoid, and Hubert hadn’t thought about how unnerving it was to be pursued in the fog. It wouldn’t be the first time that Hubert had been blithe about his effect on people. His thoughts spun like a girl picking petals off a flower—he’s angry with me, he’s not, he’s angry...

“So,” Hubert said easily, “You might not know that part of my duty as the Minister of the Imperial Household is knowing who comes and goes when, and for how long. I’ve noticed something interesting about your habits.” 

“Oh?” Ferdinand said with unconvincing nonchalance. The last petal had been plucked; he’s angry with me. 

“Your rides have been getting longer. Quite a bit longer, in fact. Almost two hours.” 

“Is that really what you wished to bring up to me by riding all the way out here?” Ferdinand huffed. “I thought you were doing something friendly.” 

“Oh, I am,” said Hubert ominously. “It’s more than just your riding habits,” he continued, “I’ve found you’ve been spending quite a lot of your afternoons and evenings at various functions. Clearly you’ve been whittling away at your productive hours with frivolities.” 

“Frivolities—really Hubert? My rides are maintenance for my mind and body, and those functions you are deriding are for building political connections.” 

“Even those two evenings of opera with Dorothea just last week? And those long lunches with Linhardt?”

Ferdinand’s face grew hot, unbearable in the cold, damp air. He couldn’t escape Hubert’s keen eye for patterns. Without really meaning to, he urged his horse faster along the road, forcing Hubert to do the same to keep abreast of him. “I have had plenty of time to do my work, Hubert,” Ferdinand said vehemently. 

“If you really have been keeping up with your work, as you say, surely you’ll have satisfactory answers to some questions I wish to put to you,” Hubert said evenly, as if this was entirely reasonable, to quiz him about matters of state on what should be his invigorating morning ride. “Firstly, in the report we received on Monday from the north of Faerghus, prospectors had found a new vein of something quite interesting. Do you recall what it was?” 

He really was in trouble now. The geographic reports were always the last ones he read, and he had already been putting off the previous one from Leicester. The Faerghus report sat untouched on his desk. “I do not,” he said, knowing better than to lie. His hands sweated in his leather gloves. 

“It was cobalt,” Hubert said with a smirk. “A good pigment, and useful for magic.” Ferdinand fared a little better when Hubert peppered him with questions about the standings of various lords in Leicester, but in his nervousness he kept picking up his horse’s pace, until they were going at a good canter. Then Hubert launched into interminable questions about damned Faerghus—what became of the heirs of Fraldarius, which lords were still royalists, which townships had sent reports to Enbarr, the credibility of reports of surviving Blaiddyds, et cetera et cetera. Now Ferdinand was going at nearly a gallop along the road as it began to climb into the hills. The fog tore away, swirling beneath them as the land rose. 

Hubert pursued him, now concentrating too much on staying in the saddle to shout any questions about buckwheat exports or future wool production. He knew that Hubert wasn’t as good a rider as him, and the road was getting rough. He could probably lose him for good up here. He was being childish, but he indulged his pique, and pulled away from Hubert at last. If he was going to lose another morning to him he would at least have a few moments of peace. He would have that little time when he didn’t have to think about the truly terrifying scale of Fódlan and all the facts it contained, and the fact that he was, in large part, responsible for it. This sobering thought, one he had not put into words, made him slow his horse. He heard Hubert’s mount laboring up the slope behind him. Of course his lack of skill in horseback riding meant nothing, he made up for it with persistence. He couldn’t outrun him forever. Time to end this farce, Ferdinand thought grimly, and made for a spot he knew had a pretty view of the valley. 

It was a little flat outcropping of rock jutting out from the hillside. The fog was beginning to burn away, but thin low clouds dampened the sun. It was not much warmer than it had been when he started out at dawn. He dismounted and patted his horse, apologizing to her for putting her through a chase. Hubert crashed gracelessly through the underbrush, and seeing him standing there, pulled his horse in an awkward circle to bleed off some speed. 

“Are you done?” Ferdinand said to Hubert, who looked down at him from his mount. 

“Are you?” said Hubert. 

“Yes,” he sighed. “You are right. I have been putting aside my work somewhat. It is just—my whole life I was to be the Prime Minister of Adrestia, the nation that ended at the mountains.” He waved his hands at the valley, and Enbarr beyond, and more. “Not the whole damned continent. Not that kind of Adrestia.” 

Hubert began to laugh. He glared at him—he was really done with this. “What are you crowing about?” 

Hubert dismounted, still chuckling. “Now that we’ve both treated each other like children, I think we’ve gotten to the point where we can really help each other.” He fished around in his saddle bags and pulled out a couple of flasks and tin cups. “I did sleep very well, and when I woke up I had an idea that opened up that cipher in a completely unexpected way. I admit that sleep was more helpful than anything else I had thrown at the problem.” 

“I’m glad to hear that,” Ferdinand said, not gladly. 

“Because of you, Lady Edelgard may owe you her life, and in a way, my life. For that I am grateful. You also taught me the value of holding each other to account.” Ferdinand grimaced inwardly. Of course that would be Hubert’s takeaway, not the value of maintaining your health. 

“You know, if you were not quite so stubborn, I would not have had to use such tactics as having Blanchard imprison you in your room just so you would sleep.” 

Hubert laughed. “And if you were not so immune to criticism I would not have had to humiliate you into admitting you had been neglecting your work, for surely the great Ferdinand of Adrestia would not be procrastinating.” 

“Excuse me Hubert, I am quite certain you humiliated me just to punish me for my ordering you around.” 

“Why can’t I do both?” Hubert smiled. “Come, I have some tea for you. It might be a little cold—I didn’t expect to have to chase you through the hills.” He poured a cup and heated it with mage fire. After pouring himself some coffee they sat on the rocks and looked out over the valley. 

The quilt of fields rolled gently out to the hard walls of Enbarr, softened by mist. The dun marble of the palace gleamed with the light of the strengthening sun. It was such a familiar sight for Ferdinand, one he had beheld so many times since he had learned to ride, having lived his whole life in the capitol. His father, gone, the old ways dismantled by Edelgard’s gauntleted hands, the courts of kings and grand dukes dissolved, the church brought to heel, everything was different. Yet this view, and the hills, and the fields that grew the wheat for the bread he had in his pack, hadn’t changed. He sipped his tea. 

“I have a proposal,” Hubert said, “How about you and I go riding every morning, and when we find a spot like this we can review some reports, so that when you actually get back to the palace you’ll be more prepared for the trials of the day. And since I’ll need to be up early to accompany you, and since I don’t want to fall off my horse in the process, I will be forced to not spend all night nosing after a problem I can’t solve.” 

Ferdinand couldn’t quite process what he was hearing. On the one hand, Hubert had finally taken up his offer. On the other, his morning rides would be quite a bit more different than he had expected. But perhaps he could deal with that, because it did seem wonderful, to not be overwhelmed by everything he had to know

“We really cannot afford to fail,” said Hubert, sipping his coffee. “You and I are holding something too precious.” 

Ferdinand agreed. If they could hold each other to account, they would be much less likely to slip up and fail each other, Edelgard, and the whole world. That gave him a kind of confidence he hadn’t felt for a long time, not since the start of the war. It was heartening to have that kind of support, as everything else shifted around him, even if it came out of the fog like the Death Knight wielding reports like a weapon. Judging by Hubert’s unusually relaxed expression, he felt the same. Finally, some peace.

**Author's Note:**

> a gift for T!


End file.
